I spent hours in front of the TV with my list of key races and ballot issues and didn’t go to bed until late. When I did, I felt a modicum of relief: The Dems had done what they absolutely needed to do. They had pulled the country at least one step back from the abyss. But a lot of key races I’d targeted went red, and when I went to bed well after midnight, I was feeling a lot more relief than excitement. Kind of “meh,” in other words.

My wife, on the other hand, went to bed around 10, saying, “Let’s just wait and see what’s under the tree tomorrow morning.” At the time, the returns in were largely from Trump country, and I wasn’t feeling so great about things. The Blue Wave, from what I could see, largely hadn’t materialized.

And then I woke up today. And started reading. And, well, the longer the day went on, the more good news started trickling in. And, long story short, had I done what my wife did, I’d have gotten the same good news she did without all that stress.

And there was a lot of good news.

The first thing we learned was that the Democrats had taken the House and, with it, the specific power of subpoena and the general power to hold a largely lawless administration accountable. That HAD to happen if we were not going to proceed farther down the same road Germany traveled in the 1930s. And praise God, it did.

Not only that, we picked up a number of governorships, although the big prizes in Georgia and Florida remain contested for the moment and it looks like, win or lose, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp will have been allowed to at least try to steal his own governor’s race. That can never be allowed to happen again, in Georgia or anywhere else.

We also learned that a lot of small miracles can happen overnight. Lucy McBath, whose valiant effort to oust the despicable Karen Handel in the Georgia Sixth looked DOA at midnight, now appears to have pulled through. Same with Joe Cunningham in the S.C. First against Katie Arrington, whose concession speech has to be seen and heard to be believed: She’s a narcissist to rival Trump, and I don’t say that lightly.

We learned that this election was even more of a referendum on Trump than a lot of people had thought. And I learned this because our six-term Republican sheriff, who faced a Democratic challenger with some nontrivial baggage, lost. Nobody around here, and I mean nobody, saw that coming. He’d been a perfectly good sheriff for a long time — I didn’t like him personally, but with the possible exception of his high-speed-chase policy, which he finally agreed to change after a pursuit-induced wreck in which five people died, I couldn’t really point to anything wrong that he was doing professionally that would make people vote against him. The only thing I could think of to make that many people vote against him was his support for Trump.

That said, we also learned that sometimes all politics really IS local. Trudy Wade, perhaps the second-vilest human being in the N.C. Senate behind GOP leader Phil Berger, had spent the past few years shitting on Greensboro out of spite. Karma’s a bitch.

If you doubt that, ask Kim Davis, the Kentucky Republican who made national news by refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage a few years ago. One of the men whom she had tried to deny a marriage license ran against her and whipped her like a rented mule.

What else did we learn?

We learned, those of us who didn’t already know, that the Green Party is just a bunch of Republican tools. They may have cost Democrat Kyrsten Sinema the U.S. Senate race in Arizona — the vote totals for the Green candidate well outweighed the difference between Sinema and Republican incumbent Martha McSally. The Green candidate in the New York 19th was taking money from a big GOP donor while attacking the Democratic candidate from the left.

We learned that voters feel very differently about issues versus candidates. In Florida and Missouri, to name just two, voters approved progressive ballot measures by significant margins — but voted for the politicians who oppose those measures. Part of that might just be due to racism, particularly in Florida. But there’s something else there that Democrats need to tease out and address.

Speaking of Florida, after the passage of Prop 4, which restores voting rights to most felons who have served their time, we learned that the Florida electorate could look very different, and much more Democratically inclined, in 2020. Prop 4 restores voting rights to about 1.5 million people. If Dems can get even 15% of those people to register and vote in 2020, they’ll find they have significantly more breathing room than they’re used to.

Speaking of voting, we learned that Americans are tired of vote suppression. A number of states passed initiatives to make it easier to register and vote and/or to prevent partisan gerrymandering. Here in N.C., unfortunately, we passed a state constitutional amendment requiring voter ID, but the measure is pretty much identical to a law the 4th Circuit overturned last year, with SCOTUS declining to hear the GOP appeal. I think the same thing will happen, and I am cautiously optimistic that there might not even be four votes on the high court to hear the same appeal again. The court traditionally has thought of itself as being a lagging indicator of political mood; what happened in this arena last night should signal to the court that, surprise, people want to vote, want their votes to count, and do not want to be messed with while voting, and that it should adjudicate accordingly because these are reasonable requests.

We learned that Republicans are perfectly willing to re-elect congresscritters who are under indictment (Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter) or who have been credibly accused of, at the least, knowing about the sexual assault of young men and refusing to do anything about it (Jim Jordan). Collins and Hunter, at least, are unlikely to serve their full terms.

We learned that gerrymandering remains a huge problem in North Carolina: “In Congress, Republicans won 50.3% of the overall vote but 77% of the seats (10-3). That’s the power of gerrymandering.” But in 2020, districts will have been redrawn so that Democrats will have at least a fair shot at real representation in that year’s U.S. House races.

We learned that after three and a half years, the national media largely still have not learned how to do their jobs without providing an echo chamber for Trumpian propaganda and bigotry. Funny how completely the refugee caravan, which had loomed so large on the media agenda these past few weeks, disappeared without a trace in news coverage this morning.

Here’s one huge national lesson, particularly for Democrats: Put the best people you can at the top of the ticket, and then contest every single downballot race. Every. Single. One.

Beto O’Rourke narrowly lost his battle to take the odious Ted Cruz’s U.S. Senate seat in Texas. But O’Rourke built a campaign so organic and powerful that although he didn’t quite win his own race, he’s probably responsible for winning dozens of others. Not only did the particularly stupid tool Rep. Pete Sessions get ousted, but so, also, did every Republican judge in Dallas and Houston. (One of them actually pitched a temper tantrum in court this morning.) O’Rourke’s campaign likely also is responsible for the fact that Democrats won 31 of 32 contested Court of Appeals races, taking 17 seats from GOP incumbents. That changes the legal/justice landscape of Texas overnight. And Texas was just one state; it’s now looking as if Stacey Abrams’s campaign for Georgia governor helped the aforementioned Lucy McBath across the finish line in the Georgia Sixth as well.

And we learned, finally, that we as a people can say, “Yes, Trump is crazy, but look at all this AMAZING stuff we can do if we don’t let ourselves be defined by his craziness and if we show up on Election Day.”

So, no, we didn’t accomplish everything we were hoping for this time last night. But we got a glimpse of what we can accomplish, if we all show up and all keep working. So everyone take a deep breath, and then let’s get to work on 2020 and the ongoing struggle to create a more perfect Union.

It is vitally important that the Republican party be kept away from as much power as possible until the party regains its senses again. It is not just important to the advance of progressive goals, though it is. It is not just important to maintain the modicum of social justice that it has taken eighty years to build into the institutions of our government, though it is. It is important, too, that that you vote for one of these men based on whom else, exactly, he owes. Who is it that’s going to come with the fiddler to collect when you get what you’ve bargained for?

Barack Obama owes more than I’d like him to owe to the Wall Street crowd. He probably at this point owes a little more than I’d like him to owe to the military. The rest he owes to the millions of people who elected him in 2008 — especially to those people whose enthusiasm I neither shared nor really understood — and he will owe them even more if they come out and pull his chestnuts out of the fire for him this time around. He may sell them out — and, yes, I understand if you wanted to add “again” to that statement — but they are not likely to revenge themselves against the country if he does and, even if they decided to, they don’t have the power to do much but yell at the right buildings.

On the other hand, Willard Romney owes even more to the Wall Street crowd, and he owes even more to the military, but he also owes everything he is politically to the snake-handlers and the Bible-bangers, to the Creationist morons and to the people who stalk doctors and glue their heads to the clinic doors, to the reckless plutocrats and to the vote-suppressors, to the Randian fantasts and libertarian fakers, to the closeted and not-so-closeted racists who have been so empowered by the party that has given them a home, to the enemies of science and to the enemies of reason, to the devil’s bargain of obvious tactical deceit and to the devil’s honoraria of dark, anonymous money, and, ultimately, to those shadowy places in himself wherein Romney sold out who he might actually be to his overweening ambition. It is a fearsome bill to come due for any man, let alone one as mendaciously malleable as the Republican nominee. Obama owes the disgruntled. Romney owes the crazy. And that makes all the difference.

I expect Pat McCrory to be elected governor tomorrow and for his coattails to bring this state’s electoral votes back into the red column. And I expect McCrory to spend the next four years signing every damn-fool piece of lunacy the teabaggers in the General Assembly send his way, because that’s the GOP base in this state now, and McCrory has ambitions. And the damage from this dynamic will be significant. Make no mistake. If we’re not careful, by 2016 we’ll be well on the way to making Mississippi look good.

But, if honest ballots are counted honestly, Barack Obama will win re-election with a minimum of 300 electoral votes. And given issues ranging from Iran to global warming, that might be the difference between life and death, both here and abroad, to millions of people. Me? I’ve already voted. I am disgruntled, very much so. But I am not crazy.

A final word to my friends in deep-blue states who aren’t totally happy with Obama’s record and are thinking about casting a protest vote for Jill Stein or Roger Rabbit or whomever: I hear you. But know this: Those crazy folks I mentioned above intend, if Obama wins the electoral vote but not the popular vote, to claim that Obama is not a “legitimate” president. They will go through every hare-brained legal exercise they can find to try to prevent him from returning to the White House, and there are at least four Supreme Court justices who will nod and smile at any damn-fool argument these crazy people try to make. Yes, yes, George Bush lost the popular vote in 2000. But expecting logical consistency from crazy people, although not necessarily crazy itself, is a fool’s errand. Let’s just erase this contingency by giving Obama a popular-vote margin not even well-organized, well-funded crazy people can steal.

Saturday, November 3, 2012 7:43 pm

I honestly don’t know who’s going to win the presidential election on Tuesday. The New York Times’s much-praised and much maligned Nate Silver gives Obama something like an 80 percent chance, but as Silver himself will tell you, that’s probability only and the other 20 percent — i.e., Romney’s chances — is not trivial.

But I think that the Republicans think they know who’s going to win on Tuesday, and they’re acting like they’re pretty sure it’s not their guy. Consider:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott — who, in a nation governed by the rule of law, would have gone to prison for defrauding the government during his previous life as CEO of a for-profit health concern — has tried as hard as he can to limit and harass early voting in Florida. I’m sure the fact that early voters there — as in most of the rest of the country — are predominantly Democratic has nothing to do with it.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who already has gotten in trouble with the federal courts over his messing around with voting, has imposed new rules that essentially require the voter to act as his own elections official or else his vote won’t count. Voting rights activists sued last name night, claiming that Husted’s action violates a previous court order, statements by Husted’s own attorneys and Ohio state law as well. Were I the judge in the previous case, I’d have had his ass in jail on a 6-month contempt-of-court sentence before the sun set today, because this is exactly the kind of behavior that contempt-of-court citations — and impeachments — were created to address.

WASHINGTON — The Mitt Romney campaign and its business allies are driving home a final message unlike one we’ve seen in past presidential campaigns: Vote Romney, or you’re fired.

The pressure on workers in swing states to toe the GOP line hasn’t been restricted to any particular industry. Corporate apparel makers in Ohio, truck stop attendants in Ohio and Virginia, casino employees in Nevada, construction workers in Florida, gift-card purveyors in Colorado and Florida, car-parts makers in Michigan, software technicians in Florida and Colorado, coal miners in Ohio, dock manufacturers in Wisconsin, frozen-food packers in Michigan, resort staff in Florida, Virginia and Nevada, and people all over the country who work — or used to work — for Koch Industries or another Koch-owned company have all been given notice by their boss that an Obama victory could lead to layoffs or otherwise harm the company and its workers.

Even workers who’d already been laid off by the Kochs were mailed letters urging them to vote Republican or else “suffer the consequences” of Obama policies that would harm the company.

Romney himself urged conservative business leaders this June to “make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections.”

Before the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision, it would have been illegal for a boss to tell an employee that “their job and their future” was on the ballot on Election Day. But the court now considers such electoral pressure an expression of free speech.

A few observations and opinions:

As I said earlier, this is not the behavior of a party that expects to win on the merits.

More particularly, if you have to engage in conspiracy to deny American voters their civil rights — which carries up to 10 years and a $10,000 fine, Rick Scott and Jon Husted — you’re not only acting like you don’t expect to win, you’re acting like you don’t want to be an American anymore. Well, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, because keeping legal voters from voting is about as un-American as it gets.

Americans let the GOP steal the election in 2000, and by a large majority, they think we got the worst president in modern times out of that deal. I doubt they’ll be so willing to let it happen again, particularly when, as is the case this time, it’s so blatant and out in the open.

And finally, for the moron CEOs who are threatening their employees if they don’t vote for Romney — despite the fact that under Obama they’ve posted record profits, amassed record cash reserves, watched the Dow double since this president took office, avoided any punishment for blowing up the whole economy in 2008 AND enjoyed the lowest top marginal income tax rates and corporate income tax rates since the Korean freakin’ War and the greatest income inequality since the days of Jay and Daisy — here’s our response to you:

We already had the feudalism-vs.-democracy argument. In 1776. Your side lost. Get the hell over it.

“Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.

“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist, the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilisation, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

Thursday, August 9, 2012 8:37 pm

This, kids, is what they call a teachable moment, courtesy of BooMan. Suppose this story were going around …

Mitt Romney isn’t really a Mormon. He’s an atheist who only went along with his father’s faith so he could duck the Vietnam draft. He didn’t actually try to convert anyone when he was in France either. In reality, he spent all his time in Monte Carlo gambling and buying high-end hookers. When his daddy found out what he was doing, he made him come home and marry his high school sweetheart. Actually, he only made him marry her after the second time she got pregnant. The first time, they got an abortion. Then Romney started using some of the mafia connections he had made in Marseilles to import heroin. By the time he became governor, they were flying it straight into a secret airport they set up in the Berkshires. When one of the pilots started to talk, Romney had him killed.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s an amalgam of stuff that has been said about our past two Democratic presidents, personalized a bit for Romney.

Now, if we started telling these stories to people, and a substantial percentage of the population started to actually believe these stories, and if congressmen humored and even encouraged the people who believed these stories, and if media figures talked about these stories, and if Congress actually had hearings about some of these stories, then Mitt Romney would know what it’s like to be treated like a Democrat.

Stuff like this is where the notion that there’s a lower bar for the GOP, that IOKIYAR*, originates.

Now, I really wish Reid’s source, if the person exists, would come forward. And if the source doesn’t exist, then I’ll be the first to say Reid deserves whatever happens to him, whether it’s being hauled up before the Senate Ethics Committee, toothless as it might be, or sued.

But as much as I respect U.S. journalists who attempt to fact-check politicians, they have committed some serious failures of both logic and context in criticizing Reid for an accusation that, while unproven, is not demonstrably false and that Romney himself could easily disprove if it were.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012 10:03 pm

Almost 20 years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then the senior senator from New York and then and now one of the smarter congresscritters ever to serve, published an essay in the journal American Scholar. In it, drawing on the work of Emile Durkheim and Kai Erikson, he suggests that social control is aimed not necessarily at eliminating things like crime, just keeping it within certain boundaries:

In both authors, Durkheim and Erikson, there is an undertone that suggests that, with deviancy, as with most social goods, there is the continuing problem of demand exceeding supply. Durkheim invites us to imagine a society of saints, a perfect cloister of exemplary individuals. Crimes, properly so called, will there be unknown; but faults which appear venial to the layman will create there the same scandal that the ordinary offense does in ordinary consciousness. If, then, this society has the power to judge and punish, it will define these acts as criminal and will treat them as such.

Recall Durkheim’s comment that there need be no cause for congratulations should the amount of crime drop “too noticeably below the normal level. It would not appear that Durkheim anywhere contemplates the possibility of too much crime. Clearly his theory would have required him to deplore such a development, but the possibility seems never to have occurred to him.

Erikson, writing much later in the twentieth century, contemplates both possibilities. “Deviant persons can be said to supply needed services to society.” There is no doubt a tendency for the supply of any needed thing to run short. But he is consistent. There can, he believes, be too much of a good thing. Hence “the number of deviant offenders a community can afford to recognize is likely to remain stable over time.” [Moynihan’s emphasis — Lex]

Social scientists are said to he on the lookout for poor fellows getting a bum rap. But here is a theory that clearly implies that there are circumstances in which society will choose not to notice behavior that would be otherwise controlled, or disapproved, or even punished.

It appears to me that this is in fact what we in the United States have been doing of late. I proffer the thesis that, over the past generation, since the time Erikson wrote, the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can “afford to recognize” and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the “normal” level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard.

From such “exempt[ing] much conduct previously stigmatized” came the title of Moynihan’s essay, “Defining Deviancy Down.”

Now, keep in mind that at the time Moynihan wrote this, violent crime had been rising steadily for 40 years. Almost 20 years later, it has fallen off dramatically, and the reasons may have less to do with any sociological factor than crime-and-punishment types want to believe. (Doctors who wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1992 that violent crime was a “public health emergency” were more right than they knew.) Certainly, it has nothing to do with whether we still consider violent crime to be, well, violent crime. We unquestionably do, even if some other behaviors widely considered deviant a couple of generations ago (e.g., homosexuality) no longer are so widely considered.

But this phenomenon, as Erikson predicted, has played out in other areas, most notably in this election year what is considered sane, rational political discourse. Consider, if you will, what Gingrich said this past weekend about stem-cell research: He called such research “the use of science to desensitize society over the killing of babies.”

Did anyone blink? Did anyone in a position of responsibility in the Republican establishment suggest, publicly or privately, to Gingrich that if he was going to suggest that scientists were in the business of whipping up some baby-killing fervor as an end in itself, he might want to offer some, you know, evidence? If so, there’s been no sign of it.

You could argue that stem-cell research represents hubristic overreach on the part of the scientists. You could argue that those scientists are fundamentally amoral and that they are only in it for the pot of gold that waits for whoever finds a way to use stem cells to cure some horrendous disease. You could argue that you have come to oppose such research after long and prayerful consideration once you were no longer governor of a state that depends so vitally on bio-tech dollars and have only to give long and prayerful consideration to the question, “How will this play among the rubes in Florida?” (That would be Willard Romney’s position.) You could argue that you are opposed to it simply because every fertilized embryo is sacred. Period. (Hi, Rick Santorum!) You could argue any one of those. I would not agree with you, but I would not feel compelled to call the Nervous Hospital and have you picked up, either.

But consider, for a moment, what Gingrich said. He accused these scientists not of hubris or cupidity, and he did not accuse them of idly casting aside the philosophical considerations of their work. He is saying that these scientists, and their work, are deliberately engaged in a campaign to make the “killing of babies” easier in American society, that their grand design is not fame and fortune, nor ridding the world of terrible illness, but, rather, that they are in service to a dark agenda to turn America into some kind of futuristic child-killing dystopia. I’m sorry, but this is just nuts. I mean, I’ve heard the argument that climate scientists have invented the “hoax” of global climate change in order to get rich, but that’s a nursery rhyme compared to what Gingrich is dealing out here.

Tell me again that Ron Paul is the crackpot in this race.

(Full disclosure: Both my brothers have Type 1 diabetes, and if stem-cell research offers them the hope of a cure, which it might, then I support it. For that matter, if scooping Gingrich’s guts out with a rusty spoon offered them the hope of a cure, I would at least strongly consider it.)

I’ve argued before that the GOP primary voting base responds most strongly to hippie-punching, and that people like Newt Gingrich succeed by punching hippies. But cui bono? Moynihan had a suspicion on that, too:

Our second, or opportunistic mode of redefinition, reveals at most a nominal intent to do good. The true object is to do well, a long-established motivation among mortals. In this pattern, a growth in deviancy makes possible a transfer of resources, including prestige, to those who control the deviant population. This control would be jeopardized if any serious effort were made to reduce the deviancy in question. This leads to assorted strategies for re-defining the behavior in question as not all that deviant, really.

Newt Gingrich has made it very clear that he wants to dismantle the New Deal and Great Society, and in this he is not alone in the GOP. Indeed, some of the party’s wealthiest, most powerful backers — corporatists, if not fascists, and people whose beliefs are inimical to American ideals — stand to get even wealthier and thus more powerful if Gingrich or anyone like him gains political power.

Does it matter that these candidates defy the laws of nature by pushing creationism, casting unfounded doubt on a proven means of reducing disease and dismissing climate science that might be essential to the survival of the species? Does it matter that these candidates make the grossest of moral accusations without evidence or accountability? Does it matter that these candidates’ proposals are plainly and simply unconstitutional as well as economic and social suicide?

It does not.

And so they define lunacy down. They hear the batshit and do not think, “How can I make this stop?” but, rather, “How can I make this work for me?” And so the nation bungee jumps into the Canyon of Crazy without a cord.

Moynihan, speaking in the context of violent crime and single-parent households (statistically associated with many social ills), concluded:

As noted earlier, Durkheim states that there is “nothing desirable” about pain. … Pain, even so, is an indispensable warning signal. But societies under stress, much like individuals, will turn to pain killers of various kinds that end up concealing real damage. There is surely nothing desirable about this. If our analysis wins general acceptance, if, for example, more of us came to share Judge [Edwin] Torres’s genuine alarm at “the trivialization of the lunatic crime rate” in his city (and mine) [New York — Lex], we might surprise ourselves how well we respond to the manifest decline of the American civic order. Might.

One large subset of the people who would govern us has taken leave of its senses. Our “liberal” news media treats this phenomenon as unremarkable. And those Americans who haven’t had to sell their TVs and gaming sets because their unemployment insurance has run out are, by and large, taking comfort in “Call of Duty” and “NCIS” instead of doing something about it.

Monday, December 12, 2011 8:52 pm

There are people who have the job of being political hacks. Of being [jerks]. I get that. I don’t have a problem with these people. It’s their jobs to argue for things based on what the politics is. I don’t think they should be obeyed, but their existence doesn’t bother me.

The problem isn’t that people listen to political hacks, the problem is that they assume they’re right. You know, “the politics of mortgage relief is bad” trumped “the politics of people being thrown out of their homes and the economy being horrible is bad” based on this kind of advice.

The point is, I get that the sociopaths are in the room. But don’t necessarily obey them, and more than that … don’t necessarily assume they really know what they’re doing. They’re sociopaths, after all.

I’m not sure whether Atrios intended his remark to cover American “journalism” or just the political sphere, but, believe me, it covers a lot of the D.C. media establishment at least as much as it covers politicians and their minions.

Friday, August 27, 2010 8:56 pm

With the economy rapidly weakening, some senior Democrats are having second thoughts about raising taxes on the nation’s wealthiest families and are pressing party leaders to consider extending the full array of Bush administration tax cuts, at least through next year.

This rethinking comes barely a month after Democrats trumpeted plans to stage a high-stakes battle over taxes in the final weeks before the November congressional elections.

The Bush tax cuts are set to expire in December. Republicans are pushing to extend them all, while President Obama has forcefully argued that the country cannot afford to keep tax breaks on income over $250,000 a year for families and $200,000 a year for individuals.

But a growing cadre of Democrats – alarmed by evidence that the recovery is losing steam and fearful of wounding conservative Democrats in a tough election year – are advocating a plan that would permanently extend tax cuts benefiting the middle class while renewing breaks for the wealthy through 2011, senior Democratic aides said.

That idea has long appealed to some conservative Democrats in both chambers, who argue that Congress should not raise anyone’s taxes until the economy is more stable. But Democrats said it has gained momentum since economist Mark Zandi, a key adviser to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), adopted that view during a presentation at a Democratic issues conference in California in mid-August.

Zandi, an adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), later played an important role in designing Obama’s economic stimulus package, enacted by Congress last year.

These tax cuts never should have been enacted in the first place. The president has the right idea here. So if you’re a Democrat running this year, here’s what you do:

call the GOP plan “a bailout for the same people who benefited from the bank bailouts.” This description, by the way, is basically true.

hang it around your opponent’s neck like a dead, stinking sea bird.

run against it.

In addition to being winning politics in all but a few of the nation’s 435 House districts, this approach has the added benefit of being the right thing to do from a policy standpoint.

If you’re a Democratic congresscritter and you’re paying any money at all to a political consultant whose advice to you on this issue differs in any significant way from my advice to you on this issue, fire him/her and hire me. You won’t regret it.

Like this:

Tuesday, April 20, 2010 8:51 pm

You know why there are no great humor novels about state legislatures? Because real life outdoes anything a novelist could conjure:

Last Wednesday, the [Georgia] House Judiciary Committee entertained SB 235, the bill sponsored by Sen. Chip Pearson (R-Dawsonville) to prohibit the involuntary implantation of microchips in human beings. …

At the House hearing, state Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Kennesaw), who is shouldering the legislation in the House, spoke earnestly for better than a half hour on microchips as a literal invasion of privacy.

He was followed by a hefty woman who described herself as a resident of DeKalb County. “I’m also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip,” the woman said. Slowly, she began to lead the assembled lawmakers down a path they didn’t want to take.

Microchips, the woman began, “infringe on issues that are fundamental to our very existence. Our rights to privacy, our rights to bodily integrity, the right to say no to foreign objects being put in our body.”

She spoke of the “right to work without being tortured by co-workers who are activating these microchips by using their cell phones and other electronic devices.”

She continued. “Microchips are like little beepers. Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission,” she said.

It was not funny, and no one laughed.

“Ma’am, did you say you have a microchip?” asked state Rep. Tom Weldon (R-Ringgold).

“Yes, I do. This microchip was put in my vaginal-rectum area,” she replied. Setzler, the sponsoring lawmaker, sat next to the witness – his head bowed.

“You’re saying this was involuntary?” Weldon continued.

The woman said she had been pushing a court case through the system for the last eight years to have the device removed.

Wendell Willard (R-Atlanta), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, picked up the questioning.

Like this:

Friday, November 27, 2009 2:50 pm

… and maybe the year, from commenter ThatLeftTurnInABQ, at Balloon Juice: “We don’t have a memory hole, we have a memory blender, set to puree. Once it all goes into the cultural blender, nobody makes it out alive.”

Like this:

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 8:15 pm

Michael Hastings of Newsweek has written a long and very depressing article(NSFW — language) about what it’s like to be part of the traveling national media covering a presidential campaign. I won’t say I would never want such a gig — never is a very long time — but his account makes it sound halfway between a huge pain in the butt and journalist abuse, the result being that the reporters start becoming equal-opportunity haters.

It also confirms every uncomplimentary thought you’ve ever had about the traveling press corps — no matter what your position on the political spectrum. No wonder it’s so long.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008 8:15 pm

It’s an election year, which means that all manner of e-mails will be making the rounds purporting to dish the big secret that Candidate X is trying to hide. You could just delete them … or you could turn them into what my friend David Allen calls a teachable moment.